by Lisa Smedman
He turned to Mama G. “Grandmother, it’s me, Rafael. I’m grown up. You’re in Seattle now. This is El Norte. Eduardo died crossing the border, but I made it out. And so did mí madra. Don’t you remember?”
Mama G stared mutely at him, lost in the memories that had, for her, somehow swapped places with the present. She rubbed absently at the scar on her right arm—a legacy of the violence that had gripped her part of Aztlan in recent decades.
I thought back to what Rafael had told me about his family. His parents had never been revolutionaries, but they were forced to flee Aztlan just the same. Shopkeepers with a grocery store in a small town near Mérida, they’d been accused of supplying food to the rebels, and so they ran the risk of being “disappeared” by the government. They sold the store and fled north, into the Confederated American States.
Rafael’s father was killed during the border crossing, but his mother made it. She applied for refugee status to the United Canadian American States, came to Seattle, and set up another grocery store, earning enough to raise her son on her own. But then a Stuffer Shack moved in next door, go-gangers began hanging out in its parking lot, and the store began losing business. Luisa died in a car crash when Rafael was still in his teens, and the store went under shortly thereafter.
If Rafael’s mother had relatives in the Yucatán, she hadn’t kept in touch with them. It wasn’t until the Aztlan Freedom League contacted Rafael that he realized he had a grandmother.
Mama G started to shiver. Her tongue darted rapidly in and out, wetting her lips, and she began swaying from side to side. “The demons!” she hissed in a low, urgent voice. “They will come! And with them the end of the world ..Then she sagged in Rafael’s arms.
Frightened, I grabbed her wrist and felt for a pulse. It was weak—but there. Her eyes were open but she was wincing. “Lenora? Rafael?” she said. “Where am I? My head ... it hurts.”
I brushed a strand of white hair from her eyes and touched her forehead. It felt slightly feverish.
“We’d better get those wet clothes off her and get her to bed,” I told Rafael. “I didn’t like the look of that shiver. She may be mildly hypothermic.”
We got Mama G dried off and tucked in under her electric blanket. I fetched my old police-issue medkit and applied a mild pain killer and tranq patch combo. Her mind seemed to have returned to the present, but her eyes were still wild and fearful. When she at last closed them and drifted off into a troubled sleep, Rafael dragged me back into the kitchen.
“I’m going to grease the fraggers who did this,” he said as he exhaled, pointing at the mess on the floor. His hand balled into a huge fist. “I’ll make them sorry for what they did to my Mama Grande.”
“We don’t even know who they are, Raf,” I told him quietly.
His eyes bored into mine. “But you could find out,” he said urgently. “You know how to track someone down. And you have connections.”
“I could ...” I paused, lost in thought. If I did hunt down the pair of fake missionaries and give their personal data to Rafael, he would ice them for sure. Or frag them up so bad they’d wish they were dead. Rafael had a lot of anger in him. Usually he channeled it into his sports—he played on an amateur Urban Brawl team—or else blew off steam by blasting his motorcycle through the toughest turf he could find. But in defense of his grandmother and his honor, he’d get himself into trouble for sure. And probably into the slam.
And if I gave the data to the Star instead, what would come of it? Nothing had been stolen—the worst charges the missionary pair would face were trespass and vandalism. With Mama G in a confused state, it would be impossible to prove that they had uttered threats, or even that they had been the ones to trash the place. Proving that they had committed magical assault by using a spell on her against her will would be even harder. By the time Lone Star’s mages arrived on the scene, any traces that would have been left in the astral would be long gone. So my choices were between Rafael’s overkill vengeance or a judicial slap on the wrist and the pair being back on the streets the day after their preliminary hearing.
Rafael took my hesitation as refusal. His face turned ugly. “I could hire you,” he said in a low voice. “If that’s what it would take ... I ... I could put my bike up as collateral. . .”
“You don’t need to do that, Raf,” I reassured him. “You’re the last person I’d charge for my time. I’m just as angry about this as you are. I want to see justice done, too.”
I held up the chip case. “This is one starting point,” I told him. “Maybe the pair lived near the church they boosted this from. And the rental car is another. But there’s something that tells me this is more than just a home invasion and robbery attempt. The pieces just aren’t fitting together.”
I thought for a moment. “Do you think the Aztlan Freedom League might be able to tell us anything about this? They only smuggled Mama Grande out a year ago—maybe someone’s still looking for her.”
Rafael shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“How did they get in touch with you?” Rafael had never given me the details. He’d been deep into the cloak and dagger stuff and had apparently sworn an oath of secrecy—one that even precluded telling his best friend. At the time I’d been busy and just let it ride. But now it might be relevant.
“They said they were the same group who helped my parents—and me—to come north,” he said. “I guess they remembered my name, even if I was only a baby at the time. When they couldn’t find anyone else to take Mama Grande, they looked me up.”
I winced at that one. Finding the right Rafael Ramirez in all of the nations that lay north of the Aztlan border would have been an impossible task. Instant data overload—unless the searcher already knew to localize the search to the Seattle telecommunications grid. Had Rafael’s mother kept in touch with the AFL, letting them know that she’d settled in Seattle, and had the AFL retained this information all these years, until it came time to smuggle Rosalita out? It didn’t seem credible. And why hadn’t Rafael’s mother ever told him he had a grandmother in Aztlan? Didn’t she realize that Mama G was still alive? Was staying in contact with someone in Aztlan really that difficult? Maybe the rebel uprising was more disruptive than the Azzie tridcasts admitted.
Or maybe . . . Nah, I was just being paranoid. For one wild moment, I’d wondered if the Freedom League had suckered Rafael into taking in a woman who wasn’t really his grandmother. Someone they needed to hide from the Aztlan government. And what better hiding place than with someone who had no real connection to Mama G whatsoever, but who could be tricked into thinking she was a blood relative?
But that was crazy. Mama G was a sweet, harmless, and somewhat loco elderly woman who talked to the snakes in her garden, walked around her kitchen in circles, and puttered about with supposed herbal remedies. She was hardly the stuff of which dangerous revolutionaries were made. “Ramirez is a pretty common last name,” I pointed out. “Yeah,” Rafael agreed. “José said he had a hard time finding me. But the AFL didn’t want to just dump Mama Grande in Houston. She wasn’t able to take care of herself, and needed somewhere to live and someone to take care of her. And so they made a point of tracking me down.”
“The guy from the AFL said his name was José?” I said. It was probably the Azzie equivalent of Mr. Johnson. “What was his last name?”
Rafael shook his head. “He never told me. I figured he needed to keep a low profile.”
“Could you get in touch with him if you needed to?”
“Don’t know,” Rafael answered. “Maybe. He told me to post a message to a particular chat group when Mama Grande and I got back to Seattle, to let him know we’d arrived safely. As far as I could see it was just a bunch of people talking about their favorite hot peppers or shooting the breeze with friends. I had strict instructions: log on, thank him for sending me the banana peppers, and say that they had arrived safely. That was the code. The chat group was called the Salsa Connection. I don’t even know
whether the AFL still monitors it.”
He gestured at the mess on the kitchen floor. “You don’t think the AFL had anything to do with this, do you? They were the ones who helped Mama Grande.”
“They never explained what happened to make her flee the country?” I asked.
Rafael’s eyes grew hard. “She’s just another refugee,” he answered. “A civilian who got in the way—either of the Azzie government or the Yucatán rebels. Her village was destroyed and she had nowhere else to go. She’d seen enough war—all the violence down there made her a little loco. She needed someone to take care of her.”
“Or so ‘José’ told you,” I muttered under my breath.
I could see from Rafael’s eyes that he hadn’t entirely believed the story himself. That the possibility had entered his mind that Mama G had deliberately done something-inconceivable though it might seem—to slot the Azzies off. But he needed to believe a simpler story. He’d been a lonely man, an orphan who yearned for a family. That’s what the “discovering my roots” phase had been all about. He wanted Mama G to be exactly what “José” said she was. A frail grandmother who needed the support of a strong, protective grandson.
“What did you just say?” he asked me.
“I’ll see what I can turn up,” I told him. “I’ll let you know as soon as I find out anything.” My mind was made up. For now, I’d find out who the two fake missionaries were and what they’d wanted with Mama G—then decide what to do about it later.
“What can I do?” Rafael asked.
“Do you ever talk to the neighbors?” I asked.
“Some of them.”
“Ask around,” I suggested. “See if the ‘missionaries’ called on anyone else today, or if they just came here. Let me know what you find out.”
In hindsight, I should have told Rafael to keep a close watch on Mama G. But I thought that the threat to her had passed. The pair who had messed her up with magic today had gotten what they came for. They’d made her “tell”—whatever that meant. I didn’t think they’d come back.
They didn’t. But someone else did.
3
I spent most of Saturday trying to follow up the one lead I had on the two missionaries. By the time I questioned the elf working the car-rental desk at SeaTac Airport, I was bagged and discouraged. She was young, maybe seventeen or so, and regarded me skeptically as I finished my story. Willowy and soft-looking, with long blonde hair, but with enough street smarts not to take my bogus story at face value—even if it was coming from a registered private detective.
“The guy’s been pestering my client for several days,” I told her. “Lurking outside her door, following her as she goes to work each day, waiting there for her when she gets home at night. He’s some sort of nutcase, a wannabe boyfriend who won’t take no for an answer and who won’t even give her his name. It’s creeping her out. She wants to know who this guy is. The only clue she was able to give me is that he had a Rent-a-Runabout when he sat parked outside her place all day yesterday.”
The elf stared at me, tapping the counter with long fingernails that had been replaced with “mood nails”—motion-sensitive implants that changed color every few seconds. She had expensive tastes for someone who worked at a job like this.
“So?” she said.
I pointed at the black plastic bubble that hid the counter’s security camera. “So I’d like to look through your security recordings, starting with yesterday, to see if I recognize the guy. I’ll scan through them in fast mode; it shouldn’t take more than an hour or so.”
She was dressed in a tight black skirt, high heels, and sequin-spangled blouse—hardly the sort of thing you’d wear to a day job. She reminded me more of the hookers you see down on ... I shook off the thought, not wanting any reminders of the reason I’d left Lone Star.
Since it was Saturday night, it was a safe bet that the girl had already changed out of her work clothes and would be heading out to a club the instant her shift ended. She glanced at the clock behind her. “We’re closing in fifteen minutes. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.”
I sighed. I’d been to six different Rent-A-Runabout agencies already that day, and was getting more than a little bit frustrated. I’d started with those closest to home and worked outward in a spiral from there, without any success. Now that I was here, I didn’t want to fight the airport traffic and pay SeaTac’s exorbitant parking fees twice. Besides, I had a strong hunch about this one. This time, I was going to listen to my instincts.
The clock read 10:20 p.m.—my guess was that the agency was supposed to be open for another forty minutes but that the biff behind the counter was trying to duck out early. Behind me, a steady trickle of passengers flowed back and forth through the terminal. None were renting cars—most were headed for the taxi stands outside. A constant babble of announcements competed with muzak for my attention, but the counter girl seemed adept at tuning it out.
“How much do you make an hour?” I asked her.
“Why?” She looked at me suspiciously.
I dropped my voice so the security system wouldn’t pick it up. “I’ll make this worth your while. I’ll pay double your hourly rate for as long as it takes me to look through the vids.” I pulled a credstick out of my pocket. “First hour paid up front, whether it takes me that long or not. You’ll still be out of here early enough to go out clubbing. Come on, it isn’t chill to show up before midnight anyway.”
The elf’s eyes narrowed as she thought about it. “I make fifteen nuyen an hour.”
I knew it was a lie. “Fine. Thirty nuyen up front. Deal?” She smiled. “Deal.”
I stepped behind the counter and bent down to look at the closed-circuit video recording system. It was a pretty basic unit, but one that allowed me to fast-forward or reverse through a day’s recordings by skipping ahead or back five minutes at a time. I started with yesterday’s data, choosing a start time that was half an hour earlier than when I’d spoken with the “missionaries” on the street outside my place. I skipped back through the tape as fast as possible, pausing any time I saw anyone with Hispanic features. There were quite a few possibles, and I had to double check more than once, due to the fuzziness of the playback unit’s tiny flatscreen.
After forty-five minutes, the elf was getting restless. There’d been only one customer during that time, and now the counter was officially closed. She sat on the shelf at the back of the booth, swinging her legs and boring holes into my back with her eyes. Nuyen or not, she wanted out of there. It was already 11:05.
I was just about to tell her to chill when I saw what I was looking for. I powered up the sound on the monitor, just to be sure. The screen showed two figures who matched the “missionaries” to a T, standing at the counter and talking to a rental clerk.
“Gotcha,” I said. I turned toward the elf and stabbed a finger at the screen. “That’s him. He rented a car at—”
I glanced back at the monitor’s display—“approximately seven a.m. the day before yesterday.” I skipped back to the beginning of that segment, when the pair arrived at the counter, slotted a blank chip into the unit, and made a copy of the entire transaction. I’d review it later, in a quieter place.
I looked up at the elf. “Could you access a record for me by time and date?” I asked. “I’d like any data you can provide on this rental. I’d also appreciate it if you could access your computer-monitoring system and tell me where the vehicle is currently located.”
The wary look was back in the girl’s eye. “I don’t know if I should do that,” she said. “Customer information is confidential. My boss . .. It’s not like you’re a cop or anything.” She spread her hands, flashing fingernails that had gone a deep crimson.
“I’m a private detective ..
It wasn’t working.
“Look,” I said, tucking the chip away in a jacket pocket. “I’ll give you another thirty nuyen for the data. It shouldn’t take more than a minute of your time.”
&
nbsp; “Fifty.”
I started to grind my teeth, but it turned it into a smile instead. This was for Mama G. “Fifty, then. Do it.”
My time estimate was bang on. It took less than a minute for her to call up the file. The woman had been the one who’d rented the car—which meant that I had to convince the elf that this was probably a close friend of the “stalker” and could lead me to him. The female turned out to be an Aztlan national by the name of Dolores Clemente. She had come to Seattle on a tourist visa, according to the passport she’d used as ID when renting the car. She and her male accomplice were probably both from that country—my guess was that they’d rented the Runabout as soon as they cleared customs. They’d paid in advance for a three-day rental with a certified credstick. They had until six a.m. tomorrow to return the car to any Seattle Rent-a-Runabout agency.
“Can you show me where the car is now?” I asked the elf.
Grudgingly, she touched the icon on the screen that activated the vehicle’s log. A pulsing red light and vehicle log summary superimposed on a map indicated that the car had been stationary on Puyallup Avenue for the past two hours. It took me a minute before I recognized the location: Charles Royer Station, a transportation hub that included a heliport and bullet train platforms. It looked as though the pair had bugged out of Seattle without returning their rental car. But just in case they were still waiting for a train, I decided to swing past the station. I didn’t have any clear idea of what I’d do if I found them there, and puzzled over what I’d say or do if I met them face to face.
I should have saved myself the skull sweat.
It took me longer than I expected to drive out to the station. Traffic was heavy, even for a Saturday night, and the rain had changed from its usual drizzle to a full-fledged deluge. Maybe the gods really did want to send another flood. My wipers were beating a steady tattoo when I pulled into the vast parking lot that surrounded the station.